Gathering Threads
by polar bearyl
Summary: Mito died last, outliving Hashirama and Tobirama and all of her children, and now she wasn't even dead at all. Mito wasn't going to throw her life away, though; she'll make the most out of her second life as Haruno Sakura, because there was nowhere left to go but onwards. (Reincarnation AU)
1. Thy Name is Mito

**A/N, May 22, 2018: This has been rewritten from humor to not-so-humor, oops.  
**

* * *

She has never not known.

Her last memory was after the Kyūbi was extracted and her body weakened considerably. She remembers how Kushina held her hand in hers, the girl's violet eyes shining with unshed tears. She remembers how the little girl wept and asked for her to stay. She remembers closing her eyes.

And then…? And then what?

And then she wakes up, unable to see anything but colorful blobs and light. Mito finds herself alive and she cries her lungs out.

For the first year, after she's stopped screaming, Mito does nothing but take stock of her situation. She is an infant with zero motor skills to speak of, nor does she have the right teeth to enunciate her words. And besides, what is there to say to the couple who take care of her and feed her? 'I'm sorry, but I'm not your daughter'? Yes, that will surely go over well.

So Mito does nothing but look around the rectangular room she's been placed in. It's pale pink, like the shades of a rose quartz, with a window on the far left wall that lets the sunlight in. She's been placed into a crib because her parents, whoever they are, have enough sense to know that she might attempt to roll onto her stomach even though she's not the most active baby.

She actively avoids thinking about the questions she has, specifically the ones that start with _how._

Sometimes, Mito tries to sense the chakra around her. She is a sensor first and foremost and it works to some extent. She can no longer sense people more than a five feet radius, but she can do it, so it's fine. She has time to improve, it's all she has.

It's all she has.

She familiarizes herself with… her mother's chakra and the way it projects a sense of calmness yet could turn sharp and cutting in a matter of seconds. The woman must have a wind affinity, or maybe she has water. In contrast, Mito's new father has chakra like a furnace beneath his skin, like the fires on cold winter nights. It was comforting but it was weak, unused and untrained; her new father is a civilian.

* * *

She learns many things as she grows up. She learns that her name is Haruno Sakura, she was born on the 28th of March, her parents are named Haruno Mebuki and Haruno Kizashi, and they are a clanless civilian couple. Learning these things are both enlightening as it is crushing. Mito doesn't want to live as a civilian. She doesn't want to be named _Sakura_ either, and though she's perfectly aware of how petty it is, she makes it known to her parents as soon as she's expected to start talking.

"Ma-ma," Mebuki pronounces in a tone meant for a child.

"Mama," Mito rolls her eyes. It unnerves her mother.

"Sa-ku-ra," Mebuki says, points a finger at Mito's face.

Mito squints and tries to bite it. Mebuki pulls it away before Mito can try. Mulish, Mito says, "Mi-to," and never ever says _Sakura_ despite her parents' protests. She's named after a flower, a pink flower, and Mito won't stand for it. They can take away the Uzumaki and even the Senju from her new legal documents, but she won't stand for something like _Sakura_.

It doesn't fit much for a name, anyway. Mito has fresh-blood hair, it seems she always will despite whichever life she lives, and Mito embraces the fact.

Her not-quite-parents don't give up so easily. They're puzzled, of course, about where she heard Mito from, but they don't ask more than they try and try to get her to say Sakura. But Mito is stubborn, half of the iron-will to Hashirama and his softness while the other half is Tobirama, and she doesn't answer to the petal-pink name.

"Sakura, come on sweetie, say your name."

"Mito."

"Sa-ku-ra."

"Mi-to."

"Okay, alright, let's try my name, okay, Sakura? Say mama's name: _Me-bu-ki._ Come on, sweetie."

"Me-bu-ki."

"Good! Now, again: _Sakura._ "

" _Mito._ "

Finally, Mebuki throws her hands up and says, "Eat your carrots, Mito." And it's the best day Mito has had since not-dying.

The couple doesn't change Mito's birth certificate as a final act of resistance, but Mito just takes joy in knowing that they eventually will if – when – Mito starts school and keeps filling out Haruno Mito on her tests and assignments.

* * *

She learns how to walk before she learns how to crawl. It's a backwards progression, but who really cares? Definitely not Mito, that's who.

When she can toddle around without falling flat on her face, she makes it her personal mission to roam the house of the couple who care for her. Everything is so much larger as a child. It's a strange feeling to be smaller than a table, smaller than the tall potted plant by the side of the door, especially when she knows that she was so much taller a lifetime ago. Even stranger is the way her bones don't crackle and pop with every movement. She has been an old woman for a long time, she realizes.

She basks in the outside world, content to stay beneath the tree in the backyard until her parents call for her. Mito works on her sensory abilities; at two years old, she can sense up to twenty meters away. She feels life all around her, but most of all, she feels Hashirama. She can feel Hashirama's chakra brimming with life in the trees around the area. That is when Mito realizes that she's been born into Konoha, the very same village she died in, and the irony isn't lost on her.

Sometimes she thinks her husband just screwed natural order and became a tree instead of dying. It's a funny thought.

Mito learns that her new father does have a clan, though. But they're still a civilian clan, a merchant clan in the Land of Iron. It finally occurs to Mito why the surname _Haruno_ sounds so familiar. She's older than dirt, probably, but she remembers being in her forties and being invited, along with Tobirama, to a distant cousin named Uzumaki Rui's wedding to a the clan head of a civilian merchant clan. She remembers getting drunk and commiserating with Tobirama about dead lovers and siblings. It ended with Mito punching someone in the face but she's not sure who it was even now.

So in some really, really roundabout way, it can be said that she's still an Uzumaki. It's a weak thought.

At some point, she wonders _why_ she's here, alive while everyone who she ever loved has died. At some point, she thinks that it's pointless; she's just _existing_ without a cause. There is nothing to fight for, nothing that matters—she has lost _everyone._

But then Mebuki comes and reprimands her for doodling seals – though Mebuki doesn't realize that they're seals – over the grocery list, hands on her hips and facial expression stern yet adoring, and Mito's stubborn little child mind thinks that she can live on for this woman. She thinks she can love and fight for this woman and her husband.

It's the most she can do, a compensation for not being the daughter that she knows they wished they had.

It makes her feel better.

* * *

It occurs to her, over time, how she hasn't thought of _how_ this is possible. She was too busy avoiding thinking about it that she really didn't think about it until she was forced to realize how strange her whole situation is.

She hasn't stopped or considered how she's still alive despite the vivid memory of dying until she's three years old and staring at the glossy cover of a book detailing Konoha's founding. It's from her father's book collection on the low shelf that she can reach. It's hilarious how one of Hashirama's quoted speeches about _a life well lived_ is the thing that spirals her into an unwanted introspective state.

 _Reincarnation,_ she thinks, is a concept that she doesn't quite believe in. As a shinobi, the only thing she truly put stock in was the truth that everyone dies eventually. It never occurred to her that she might live again. Perhaps that's why she's so thrown into a loop. It never occurred to her.

It _never occurred to her._

But now that it has, what if she isn't alone? Is she the only one who remembers a life long lived or are there others? Once the train of thought leaves the station, Mito finds herself subjected to almost sleepless nights. She finds herself hoping that she isn't alone in a Konoha changed by time. She doesn't even know how long it has been since she died. The constant state of not knowing makes rage bubble up in her chest, threatening to burst like a dam.

One day, it does.

"Kaa-sama," she begins, poking the vegetables on her plate with her chopsticks, but shuts her mouth a moment later. What is she supposed to say? How is she supposed to breach this subject? She didn't think this through. But it's too late now. Her parents are looking expectant, watching her from across the table. She takes a breath, "Hypothetically, if you died and, like, found yourself alive again in a different body with the distinct knowledge that everyone you've loved has died, what will you do?"

In hindsight, her question was too articulate for a little girl of three years old. Her parents' wide eyes say as much. Mito resolutely stares back, never one to back down from anything.

It takes Mebuki a long time to answer, but when she does, it surprises Mito to say the least. "I guess I'll cry about it," Mebuki muses, sounding rueful, not even questioning what might have happened to make her daughter ask such a question. Her eyes turn steely when she looks at Mito, "Then, of course, I'll make the most of it."

Mito blinks. "The most of it?" She repeats dumbly.

"Life is life; I'm not going to throw it away no matter how unexpected or unwanted," and here, Mebuki tilts her head at Mito. "If I truly have lost everything, then I'll cry, but there isn't much use in crying forever, so I'll find a reason to go onwards and just carry on."

Kizashi is looking at the two of them like they've simultaneously grown two extra heads, but Mito is watching her mother, her new mother, as the woman resumes eating her steamed vegetables. _A reason to move forward,_ and hasn't she already said to herself that she'll live on for this civilian woman and her husband? It's a start, isn't it?

It's a start. It's all she needs.

"Eat your food, Mito," Mebuki says, sounding exasperated.

Mito grins at the plate, pink and flower-patterned, and eats her vegetables.

* * *

She doesn't get out much. She doesn't get out at all until she's four years old and her parents are sticking protectively to her side, each of her hands in one of theirs. Mito never really wondered why, too lost in herself and her nonlinear stream of consciousness for the past four years, that when she finally leaves the house for the first time, it's almost a completely foreign experience, as if she hasn't walked the dirt roads of Konoha before. As _Sakura,_ she hasn't. As _Mito,_ she has. But she isn't Sakura, is she? Whatever. Whoever.

She doesn't even want to think too much about it.

Everything is so big, Mito thinks again, and she sacrifices her dignity halfway into the trip by raising her arms in a pick me up motion that her father complies with. Mito looks at the faces of the children she sees and the brand new structures that she can't recall being there before, and she wonders. Most of all, she sees the Hokage Mountain, sees the fourth addition to the monuments, and she thinks: _is Hiruzen still alive?_

 _Don't think about it, Mito._

But she can't quite stop herself. She wasn't particularly close with Tobirama's student despite her favoritism in Utatane and all their interactions revolved around Tsunade's progress under his tutelage or politics, because Mito had been part of his council, albeit briefly, and—

Mito blames him, partly, for failing Uzushio in war. Uzushio sent a missive, a call for help long before Kumo and Kiri's forces reached the village, but all Hiruzen had done was inform the Uzukage how Konoha was understaffed and the fastest help would arrive _at a week's time_ after _five days_ since he received the message . A _week_ while it only takes two days to reach the village at a jōnin's speed, and the assailants were three days away—

It's one of the last things she ever heard of before the Kyūbi was extracted, one of the last tragedies she heard of in her old age. It's one of the last things she's ever yelled at him for, her rasping voice rising in decibels it hasn't reached since Nawaki came back dead from his mission, the first of her grandchildren to die before she did.

Come to think of it, she yelled at him for Nawaki, too, even though there's nothing he could possibly do about it.

The deed was done.

 _The deed was done._

Thinking about Hiruzen makes her feel sick, makes her want to summon her chains and suffocate something.

 _She hates him. She hates him, she hates him, she **hates** him—_

She doesn't cause death by asphyxiation, though, but she does bury her face into her father's shoulder, clenching a hand through the soft material of his clothing.

"Mito?" Her father asks softly, stopping in his tracks. She can sense her mother's chakra spike in worry a few steps behind her.

"Who's the fourth?" She whispers, adding hastily, "On the mountain, I mean. He isn't in the books at home."

"Namikaze Minato," her mother pipes up, voice low, "He was the Fourth Hokage."

"Was?" Mito's heart shudders.

"He died four years ago. Konoha was attacked," Mebuki says with finality without telling Mito who attacked the village, then adds, as if expecting Mito's next question, "The Third Hokage is in charge of protecting the village again because there's nobody else to do it."

She thinks that maybe she should be concerned that the village she once loved was attacked by some unknown force, one strong enough to kill a Kage.

But all Mito hears is Hiruzen is still alive. She's going to wring his neck, Uzushio fresh in her mind, consequences be _damned._ And what does Mebuki mean by nobody else to do it? Where is Mito's granddaughter's pervert of a teammate? She knows that boy is a force to be reckoned with despite all his inhibitions. And what about Orochimaru? That boy was brilliance and a half. Where are they? _Where are they?_

They better not have died or Mito is going to set fire to the Hokage's residence.

"I'm going to get a book on recent events," she mutters, removing her face from her father's shoulder.

* * *

 **A/N: I initially posted an outline of this where Sakura more or less gradually remembered being Mito, and this is much more different. For one, Mito knows she's Mito. This is still a mess, but, well.**

 **Anyhow, thanks for reading, and maybe tell me what you think? Yeah, bye.**


	2. A Reason to Be

Mebuki and Kizashi buy Mito a book about the Third Shinobi World War and a book about the history of the Four Hokage that Konoha has ever had.

Mito learns that the Third Shinobi World War was the result of unchecked prolonged conflicts between the smaller villages and nations and the major shinobi countries. It blew out of proportion when Hatake Sakumo (Konoha ninja) killed a squad of Suna shinobi who had been initially fighting River Country-nin in an effort to save his comrades. Sakumo is shunned by the village despite his good intentions, disgraced by the people he fought for, and he eventually takes his own life just as the start of the war is officially announced.

It's a free-for-all; Konoha fights Iwa and Kiri, sometimes fighting Kumo when they breached the Land of Fire's borders. It's a war of attrition and no one really has a cause to fight for, they're just fighting because what the heck, everyone else is. And besides, if they won, they get spoils of war and possibly new territories and thus that's a win in their favor.

And there's also pride, a sort of 'your nin killed my nin so meet me at the border at eight' sort of pride that bode well for nobody.

During the Third Shinobi World War, the no-name clanless genius Namikaze Minato makes a name for himself as Konoha's Yellow Flash for recreating the Nidaime's Hiraishin, a fact that intrigues Mito deeply. Tobirama was half-mad, probably, when he invented his techniques. For someone to effectively even use some of Tobirama's higher-level ninjutsu is a feat. Mito sort of feels bad when she wishes that the Fourth Hokage lived instead of Hiruzen.

But she's still not letting Uzushio go even if she has nothing to do with it anymore.

In hindsight, Uzushio is the textbook example of prolonged conflicts left unchecked: the border skirmishes against Kiri hadn't been at random, and neither had been the appearance of Kumo nin in the area. The Kumo nin had been there to spy on Uzushio, checking to see the village's defenses and report accordingly. Hiruzen's response to their call for help is the literal definition of leaving things unchecked.

Reading the chapter on Kannabi Bridge has Mito thinking, _damn, Hiruzen, Tobirama would have never let it get this badly and you've been a Hokage for longer than Tobirama had been._

Hiruzen's failures aside, Konoha's efforts in the war result in favorable circumstances, and Iwa is left on the verge of destruction. Not even Kumo will lend a hand, not after how Iwa stabbed them in the back five years in, but Hiruzen doesn't choose to send in shinobi to annihilate one of their greatest oppositions in the war.

Instead, he calls for a truce between Iwa and the other countries they fought against when it became apparent that none of them could suffer more damage. It's a good move, because even Konoha would suffer losses in a siege even if it's in their favor, but he stupidly doesn't ask for reparations from Iwagakure even though the village and their shinobi constantly breached the Land of Fire's borders. It's a weak decision, even Mito can see as much, and to satisfy the people, Hiruzen announces his plans to step down and presents the two new candidates for Hokage:

Namikaze Minato and Orochimaru.

Here is where Mito grows confused. She knows Namikaze wins the title, but how? Orochimaru has years of experience over the other shinobi and an extensive repertoire on ninjutsu, along with the large reserves needed to pull them off. Of course she knows that strength is not the only factor to consider when choosing a Kage, but Orochimaru had been such a kind young man.

The last time Mito saw him, she sat him down for tea and asked him about his research progress, to which he thanked her for her inputs on his fuinjutsu and on the ways to preserve the power source of a seal without constantly drawing from the caster's chakra. He was saddened, yes, but who wouldn't be? Jiraiya left to be a spymaster, Mito knows, although it doesn't explain his obvious absence in the village when it needs a better leader—and the lack of accounts on the perverted idiot in the book probably stem from this fact.

If Jiraiya being a spymaster during the duration of the Third Shinobi World War was stated in print, it most likely will render his status as a spy useless, since everyone would have known from reading about it in a book—and Tsunade was gone, completely gone without allying herself to Konoha when she needed her.

That was... it was disappointing, sure, but Mito doesn't think she can blame her granddaughter after what war did to Nawaki and that kind boy Tsunade used to bring over to their house.

She isn't completely disappointed, though: there are accounts how Tsunade simply fought her way through anyone and everyone who hadn't been a Konoha-nin and offered healing when she could, although the latter part extended to non-Konoha ninja as well. She fought for herself. That's all Mito can hope for.

Anyway, Orochimaru: Jiraiya is a spymaster, Tsunade is a missing-nin in all but name, and Orochimaru had no one to keep him company when Mito last saw, no one and nothing but his research papers and an empty laboratory, but he had been a good man. Too inquisitive, thirsting for knowledge where he could find them, but he had always put the village first despite the revilement he constantly faced from the villagers for being the only one to have been born with slitted golden eyes and paper white skin, the last of the snake summoners.

Furthermore, Orochimaru was methodical enough to do what needs to be done. From what Mito read about Namikaze, he too was methodical, but to what extent?

It's a headache. That's all Mito can garner from the first book. If the citation about Kumogakure and the Hyūga on the bottom of the page was any indication, the whole situation gets so much worse. But the book does sing about Namikaze's greatness so, expecting good things from this boy, Mito opens the book on Konoha's Kage hoping that whatever killed him was actually worthy of killing him.

As in: it better not have been a weak little worm.

Ten minutes in, Mito kind of regrets hoping.

No, wait, she sincerely regrets even reading about this at all.

From the page, staring up innocuously at Mito, is an artist's depiction of the Nine-Tailed Fox, fangs bared and tails wrecking the village grounds, a single gleaming red eye staring down with malicious glee. This is the monster that Mito has sealed within her body for the majority of her life, the monster she endured shrieks of rage and curses from for sealing it, the monster who had come so close to destroying Hashirama's dream at Madara's command—

And four years ago, the beast nearly came close to succeeding.

But the Fourth Hokage saved the village by giving up his life into sealing the demon away. The book doesn't go into detail about the seal the Yondaime used, nor does it state what or, more likely, who the demon fox was sealed into, but Mito supposes it's a matter of village secrets.

Shutting the book, Mito finds herself with a plethora of questions.

The Kyūbi was freed she thinks, with a coldness that seeps into her heart. How did that happen? What happened to Kushina? Something must have happened to the girl – a woman by then, Mito guesses, though she's still not good with tracking the passage of time – for the seal on the Kyūbi to fall apart. Mito oversaw the creation of Kushina's seal before it was applied; nobody short of an exceptional seal-master could have forced it open and nothing could have considerably weakened it, maybe except for—

 _Childbirth. The seal could have weakened at childbirth_. It had been an improvement to Mito's seal but there was still the possibility of the seal weakening like it had when Mito gave birth to her second daughter. That opened yet another flood of questions, but what stood out the most to Mito was the implication that _Kushina had a child_.

She feels happiness surge, for the briefest moments, because this means that Kushina might have had the family she told Mito that she wanted, only for that happiness to crumble when Mito realizes, _Kushina could be dead_.

 _Kushina could be dead._

There is the matter of the object or person that the Nine-Tails could have been sealed into. The most likely outcome is that it was sealed into a person. A person is much more suited as a container because it can fight off anyone who might try to steal them, and with a will of their own, the demon can't simply do as it pleases and leave the person it's sealed into.

Furthermore, Konoha needs its jinchūriki. Aside from containers, they are weapons utilized to protect the village, and the Yondaime probably didn't give up his life just to seal the demon into something useless like a teapot. No, the beast's container is most definitely a person. Now it's only a matter of Kushina or her child.

Mito feels sick just thinking about it.

 _Did they both make it out alive? Is Kushina still the jinchūriki or is it her son or daughter?_ One might think that Mito's going out on a limb far too liberally, but it's logical. Kushina's child could just as easily hold the demon back due to his or her durability, no doubt inherited from Kushina. But for such a burden to be placed on a child without their consent—

Mito remembers, just vividly, how Kushina did not want to be the next jinchūriki either, but Mito could only comfort the young girl. It could have been anyone in Uzushio if they searched harder for an Uzumaki with stronger, more adaptable chakra, but the Hokage and Uzukage caught wind of Kushina first and there was no effort to find anyone else who might also have adaptability and an actual wish to serve as a container to a demon. Of course, the latter part would be hard to find, but surely not impossible.

At least Kushina was aware and eventually relented, but if the demon was sealed into a baby—

There is another possibility, of course. Kushina and her child could have died in the attack and the Yondaime could have sealed the demon into some other unsuspecting soul or, slightly better, a willing one, but that left Konoha with a weaker jinchūriki. At least, in terms of the jinchūriki of the past, the current one would be weaker in comparison if that was the case, and probably more prone to corruption. After all, Mito still doesn't know what seal the Yondaime could have used that it cost him his life. It could be stronger than the seal Mito made for Kushina or weaker than it.

 _Gods,_ Mito shuts her eyes, nails digging into the spine of her book, _what a mess._

And there's nothing Mito could have done because she was—she wasn't dead, no, but the date of the attack had been the tenth of October, and Mito distinctly remembers being a baby and being on a vacation to the Land of Iron with her parents, not returning until January next year, and Mito spent most of her time as a baby asleep, so that's probably why she missed it. Asleep or introspective, verging on depressed, and even sequestered by her parents from the outside world. That's why Mito didn't—

That's why she hadn't known until—

 _There's nothing I could have done_ , but why does she feel so angry about what happened? Why is she so _mad_ about it?

 _Because there's no one to blame_ , whispers the traitorous part of Mito's mind, _there's no one to blame, no one to point a finger at, and that's what you're good at, isn't it?_ It is, because Mito is a kunoichi who lived through war, and the best way she deals with tragedies is by punching and kicking and running people through with her golden chains, the ends sharpened into knives of pure chakra. Then when it's all done, she's given a sense of control, even as she watches the carnage.

Now she's not in control and there's a mess and she couldn't do anything, can't possibly have done anything, and so she's angry because being angry at everything is the only thing she can _do_ —

"No," Mito growls, and in the spur of a moment, she throws the book towards her bedroom door as if it's to blame for all her sorrows. It lands on its spine with a resounding thud, flipping open on its own volition, the page landing squarely on a black-and-white painting of the Fourth Hokage. Mito almost laughs, but her fingers tighten onto the hem of her shirt.

She couldn't have done anything about the Third Shinobi World War. She couldn't have done anything to stop Konoha from sending out unskilled children into the fray like it's the Warring States period all over again. She couldn't have done anything about Hiruzen's lack of assertion in the aftermath of the war, nor could she have stopped the Kyūbi from attacking.

But Mito can stop feeling terrible, stop feeling useless, and pick herself up. She can stand up and train and become a force to be reckoned with all over again. And then—and then—

And then she'll succeed Hiruzen, or whoever succeeds Hiruzen. She'll be the greatest killer in all of Konoha – that's essentially what the Hokage is – and get that damned hat off of his head. She'll be the Hokage and she's going to dismantle whoever thinks that six-year-olds are fitting soldiers by cutting them up and no one will goddamn find their bodies. She won't let other villages just step on Konoha and do as they please without consequence. Hell, she won't let enemies find Konoha. She bets she can make a concealment seal that extends village-wise, and then Konoha won't be found at all and _it won't end up gone and the people slaughtered like Uzushio—_

Konoha won't be like Uzushio. And Mito will protect Konoha like she hadn't been able to with Uzushio.

"I'm going to be Hokage," Mito declares, and maybe this time she can see Hashirama's dream for herself.


End file.
